My first speakers... HELP!

D

dunhillplanter

Enthusiast
Well I'm using 16 x cat5e per speaker, which I think is 9~10 awg, and they're only 6 ft. I read good reviews about them, and it turned out to be pretty cheap. Sound wise, I haven't done any critical listening yet.

For the RCA interconnects, I used 4 braids of the 24awg wires per side.

I would love to do some comparisons if I can get my hands on some quality cables, but I don't have that luxury right now. I'm happy that I have everything set up, and if I do find out later that the cat5e versions weren't worth my time and money, that's okay too - at least I tried it at minimal cost.

Here are the links that I used to make them:

CAT5E speaker cables, "Son of Zero-va"

And the CAT5E RCA interconnects, "4-Play"
 
KEW

KEW

Audioholic Overlord
I would love to do some comparisons if I can get my hands on some quality cables, but I don't have that luxury right now. I'm happy that I have everything set up, and if I do find out later that the cat5e versions weren't worth my time and money, that's okay too - at least I tried it at minimal cost.
I know you have read advertisements and probably even some reviews to the contrary, but "High performance" cables are one of the sorriest scams on the market.
Simply put, copper is copper and as long as you are sticking to fundamental principals of appropriately selecting the AWG for the signal level and distance, any decent cable will work fine.

However, if you really want to add some power to your car's engine, I have some Super Charged Special 1.23Green Fuel Line I'll sell you for only $12 a foot. It has grooves along the interior to align the fuel molecules so they know which way they are going when they get to the injectors and is 1.23" diameter* so you'll never have to worry about getting enough gas to the engine!

*Caution - Gas is flammable, due to the high volume flow of Super Charged Special 1.23Green Fuel Line, always wear running shoes in case of fuel line failure.:)
 
Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
Cable nonsense is always nonsense. Just stick to standard speaker wire, lamp cord, whatever you want to call it. By playing around with CAT5 and telephone wire you're just asking for problems.
 
Y

yepimonfire

Audioholic Samurai
Cable nonsense is always nonsense. Just stick to standard speaker wire, lamp cord, whatever you want to call it. By playing around with CAT5 and telephone wire you're just asking for problems.
agreed. BS, use real speaker wire.
 
Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
Even with poor-quality wire, an audible degradation of sound may not exist. Many supposedly audible differences in speaker wire can be attributed to listener bias or the placebo effect. Listener bias is enhanced in no small part by the popular manufacturers' practice of making claims about their products either with no valid engineering or scientific basis, or of no real-world significance. Many manufacturers catering to audiophiles (as well as those supplying less expensive retail markets) also make unmeasurable, if poetic, claims about their wire sounding open, dynamic, or smooth. To justify these claims, many cite electrical properties such as skin effect, characteristic impedance of the cable, or resonance, which are generally little understood by consumers. None of these has any measurable effect at audio frequencies, though each matters at radio frequencies.

wiki
 
D

dunhillplanter

Enthusiast
Really? I didn't know different cables could cause problems. What kind of problems though?

So should I toss it and get cheap speaker wires?

Edit: Okay, but I could still use the ones I made without causing problems to the speakers/receiver, right? I just made some because I have cat5e lying around, and I like making my own stuff, that's all. If it sounds better than regular speaker wires, great! If not, still okay as long as it doesn't do any damage.
 
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